1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to explicit human input or confirmation for containing networked application client software.
2. Related Art
In a typical computer system, any software running on the system has full network access to, and the service usage of, any networked service or application that is needed directly or indirectly by users of the computer system. Furthermore, networked application client software is herein defined as software that makes use of network-accessible services by using network communication from the client host to the host(s) providing the service(s), and implementing the correct protocol for using such service(s).
Today, there exist numerous techniques for automating and simulating a user in order so networked application client software would specify, request, and use the aforementioned network-accessible services. Although such techniques as creating a human-input script or creating client software that utilizes the same application programming interface (API) as the user-interface software do provide many benefits, the same techniques may also be used to allow malicious or erroneous software to make service requests that are not intended by the user.
One solution to detect malicious usage of networked application client software is to use human interactive proofs. Conventionally, human interactive proofs have been used to gather human input with high assurance that input came from a human rather than software developed to simulate human input. However, human interactive proofs have thus far neither been used to detect whether application software operating on behalf of a user is functioning without the user's knowledge or authorization, nor used within an existing application workflow to obtain human confirmation for an application transaction request.
A second solution is to implement network firewalls that control the ability of networked application client software to send request to networked application server software. In one example of a firewall technique, a firewall acts as a “proxy” for client/server transmission control protocol (TCP) connections, that is, acts as a TCP connection endpoint for a connection with a client and a second connection for a server. A firewall may set up a dialogue with the user in order to notify the user that some software is attempting to traverse the firewall to the host that the user is using. The dialogue is considered successful if the user provides the information expected in the dialogues (e.g. a mouse click on an “OK” button rather than a mouse click on a “Cancel” or “Close” button). However, such dialogue techniques have not been used to provide any assurance of human participation in the dialogue, that is, the data entered on the user's side may well be provided via a script or other forms of automation.